From the Body you Can Deduce the Method: Formal Bodies in the Works of Briner Hauser

Caught in an interrupted dialogue of concrete America, Cybil Shepherd stares back at me with a plastic piece of shit 35 mm camera. Her face collaged and reflecting the bounce of a flash too strong to construct some cracker at her feet, his face torn off by an unseen force and I feel good, magical nostalgia warming my cortex.

By Brad Feuerhelm, ASX, March 2015

Caught in an interrupted dialogue of concrete America, Cybil Shepherd stares back at me with a plastic piece of shit 35 mm camera. Her face collaged and reflecting the bounce of a flash too strong to construct some cracker at her feet, his face torn off by an unseen force and I feel good, magical nostalgia warming my cortex. The dew drips off the floral arrangement in the kitchen and I look out the window thinking of Sudek reflected in the looking glass. There is an ominous reflection of myself in the glass, my milk teeth pushed out and a gleaming row of shark’s teeth fill in the gaps of my bloody gums and I smile towards the girl with a silk ribbon tied around her neck. I imagine my new teeth caught up in the netting of her tights and a slow groaning escapes my mouth. I remember this girl and the blonde girl a 50’s ice cream malt shop dream, honey dripping of her lips. She smiles like a pin-up from an Elvgren calendar and I slowly draw in smoke from another in a series of Newports, wheezing out the back side of my neck in the red light of the darkroom, the timer glowing a faint green and I remember what it was to cope with cowardice as the ash mingles with my shoelaces. I take the crumpled five-dollar bill out of my pocket and put it in between pages 59-60 of this Dean Koontz paperback that my mother insists I read. My only desire is that I get a paper cut from its weathered pages so I can form a half-assed excuse to stop reading the motherfucker. All things point towards a damp reclamation of my thoughts. Soil, dust, and worm food.

@ Timothy Briner and Thomas Hauser

@ Timothy Briner and Thomas Hauser

@ Timothy Briner and Thomas Hauser

Rows of shark teeth hang precipitously over stacks of mass-market paperback books. These incidentals are inter-spliced with the latter’s pre-occupation with studies of feminine identity.

Briner Hauser is a joint publication between Timothy Briner and Thomas Hauser. The former tackles a formalism reminiscent of Lee Friendlander and a number of twentieth century artists focusing on the power of language, formalism, and the of modernity. There are images of consumer society at its best or worst. Rows of shark teeth hang precipitously over stacks of mass-market paperback books. These incidentals are inter-spliced with the latter’s pre-occupation with studies of feminine identity. A number of gorgeous, but sensitive nude studies that border on the erotic without being as overt (in a good way) as publishing mate Aaron McElroy. The whole of which, in black and white reminds me of Stieglitz or Strand’s investigations of the female form, notable of Georgia O’Keefe or Strand’s wife Rebecca. There is also a hint of August Sander and Edward Weston in the mix, all calculated with a sensitivity that plays gracefully between the formal studies that Hauser provides. The book is uber limited and if you can get a copy, you will not be disappointed.